


Ember

by Trash



Category: Linkin Park
Genre: Crack, Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 07:30:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1042067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her wings look the way the sun does when it shines through falling rain; a shimmering rainbow, translucent and beautiful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ember

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this - http://zancan.deviantart.com/art/Home-and-the-Fairies-21248847

Her wings look the way the sun does when it shines through falling rain; a shimmering rainbow, translucent and beautiful. Her hair is as thin and wispy as smoke and she moves like shadows out of the corner of your eye. She’s invisible if you look right at her, but you can feel her sitting on your shoulder and feel her breath against your ear as you paint. She’s beautiful, and she’s all yours.

You found her after the rain passed. The land all around your house had flooded and you dreaded venturing out to your studio at the bottom of the garden for the fear of finding everything destroyed by the water. You tread slowly and carefully across the water logged garden and pushed open the door to the little outhouse, surprised to find it bone dry inside.

Out of the corner of your eye something moved. Just a tiny flicker, like a reflection of light on glass. You turned your head to look but the flicker disappeared, moving to the opposite wall. You stepped into the room and closed the door behind you, only now noticing the ivy that had crept in through a crack in a wall and now snaked its way across the ceiling, its leaves pointing down at your art supplies, your old canvases and your sketch books.

You flicked on the light and it shone through the leaves of the ivy, casting the entire room in a pale green glow. That’s when you saw the flicker again, but this time you didn’t look at it directly. Something landed on your shoulder. Tiny little feet, and the feeling of paper thin wings brushing against your neck. You remember thinking you were dreaming, but then she whispered in your ear. She told you to just believe.

So you did.

Just like when you sat in the house staring out across the garden and prayed so hard that your paintings would stay dry, you prayed that she never leave you.

She became your inspiration. Every picture drawn or paintbrush put to canvas was because of her. She was with you to give you courage when you went to speak to a gallery about renting some space. It’s because of her influence that you came off as confident as you did, she is the reason they gave you the time of day at all.

Next week your new work will be displayed in the gallery but she hasn’t been around as much lately, and nothing you’ve done is good enough. Your paintings mean nothing. They’re lifeless and empty, cold to look at and nothing you could ever say you are proud of.

How could she leave you to feel this way?

How could you let yourself become so dependant on her?

You’re such an idiot. A complete and utter idiot. What were you thinking? All your life you’ve been abandoned and left behind, forgotten for somebody more talented or better looking or richer. Why did you think for one second that this situation would be any different, or that you’d stack up in the end?

You can’t sleep. So you get up in just your pyjamas and head out to your studio. It feels like somebody is tickling you under your skin, and your head is spinning. It’s been days since she was around, and you’ve not eaten since. Nothing makes sense without her and you can barely function.

You drag the painting you spent all day working on out into the yard and grab a bottle of mineral turpentine, a book of matches. You throw down the canvas in the middle of the yard and douse it in turpentine, the smell so strong you gag a little. The book of matches from some bar from a lifetime ago when you had friends and a family who loved you, you pull a match from it and strike it on the underside, throwing it at the canvas.

The flames are more beautiful than she ever was. You gave up everything for her. She inspired you so much you could do nothing but paint, and twice you walked out of your job to come home and put an idea down on paper because she wouldn’t leave you alone. Without the job you were broke, and she came to see you less and less. The gallery show was going to be your big break, it was going to bring her back.

But now you don’t even have that.

You don’t have anything.

The flames lick their way across the lawn, following the turpentine you spilled there. They creep toward your studio and you couldn’t care less. Let it all burn.

The whole world, let everything burn.

Your pyjama bottoms are soaked with turpentine and the flames are edging closer. Your mind is too numb to do anything about it, and when the fire encases your legs, wrapping their way up to your hands which still clutch the empty turpentine bottle, it’s the first thing you’ve felt in months.

With her gone maybe you can get on with your life.

But the fire is eating at your skin and you can’t breathe for the fumes and the smoke and somebody is screaming in the distance and then you realise that it’s you. You are screaming, and the pain is real and close and here and now.

It hurts so much, and your neighbours are screaming now too. Someone somewhere is yelling at you to get down on the ground, to roll. You fall to your knees and sob as the fire catches your hair and engulfs your head.

And when you close your eyes all you can see is orange.

And you can hear her laughing.

The austere discomfort I am coiled in  
Beneath that hole on the ceiling  
Is a whole universe of fancies  
And the sweetest haven for heart and soul.


End file.
